Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting My son's first deer

I've been reading with some relish the posts and threads of the deer going down this year, especially the kids going out. Yesterday and today were MT's youth season, and my son's first. I've been waiting since before he was born to take my boy out hunting. At first it was just a concept, something I'd like to do someday. Then when he came, and got bigger that dream really fleshed out. This evening, it all played out. He shot this guy at 280 yards, sitting off sticks with his .243. Rem 700 youth, Burris FFII 3-9, 100 grain Hornady spbt, 40 gr H4350. First shot looked good, deer went down. YAY. Then deer got up and 3 legged it out stage right. Follow up caught him in the neck. I'm about to skin him out and see the full picture, but I can tell you right now it busted the shoulder but went no further. Lungs were intact, heart had one little hole from a piece of bone shrapnel. I almost bought a box of 80 gr ttsx's. Before next year I will.

Long story short I walked his legs off yesterday and today. Hit it harder than I intended, but after seeing some dandy 4X4's, we couldn't get to cooperate, and a pile of dinks, we sat and watched a tall, but very thin horned 4X4 for a couple hours this afternoon. Crawled to about 250. Daylight was starting to run out, and I wasn't keen on doing the whole dang dance after dark, so I whistled to get him to stand up. Low and behold off to our right this guy walked into the picture. My son was all ready to shoot the thin horned buck, but I said wait, loot at that one! We couldn't see the extra points, I just thought he was a decent little 3 point. Much shorter, but heavier and darker horned. After it taking him 2 hours to decide to shoot the thin horned buck, all it took was about 30 seconds to swing the rifle to the new target, wait for him to stop and drop him.

I have never been so proud of him.

Also, I bought him a knife from Rick Menefee here on the fire for his birthday and gave it to him a little early yesterday morning. What a quality knife, holy crap that thing is not only beautiful, but functionally awesome.